Courage, vision, respect turned things around

Mar. 26, 2013

In just 14 months in office, Covington Mayor Chuck Scheper helped position the city for fiscal health and growth. / ENQUIRER FILE

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Chuck Scheper is a Covington native and retired chief operating officer of Great American Financial Resources. In 2011, he was appointed to finish former MayorDenny Bowman’s unexpired term. He left office at the end of 2012.

In October 2011, after the mayor of Covington resigned, I was asked to fill his unexpired term. With the recent loss of two major employers and with less than one week’s payroll in surplus funds, the city was facing its own fiscal cliff.

Before I accepted the position, I spoke individually with each of the city commissioners. I have never held a political office, but I have seen how divisive the debate on issues can be on a federal and local level. I didn’t expect us to agree on everything, but unless we agreed to a “social contract” to discuss issues in a civil and respectful manner, I wasn’t interested. Life’s too short I told them. They agreed.

On the day of my inauguration, I closed my acceptance speech with my favorite quote by George Bernard Shaw: Some men see things as they are and ask “Why.” I dream of things that never were and ask “Why Not?”

I asked the leadership and all the employees of the city as well as the entire community to work together to develop a plan to put our city on a sustainable pathway and to join me in saying “Why Not?”

The first order of business was to explore the depth of the crisis. A five-year forecast revealed a “business as usual” strategy would result in a staggering $20 million deficit. To address this brutal reality, we developed a plan of action. The plan I unveiled at the State of the City address was crafted by a unified commission and the city staff. Many of the ideas were not new. If I added anything, it was my ability to help tell the story that we could no longer wait to debate the critical issues.

C+V=G became our mantra. “C” stands for Courage to face the challenges and the courage to change. “V” stands for Vision, because you can’t look in the rearview mirror to solve the problems of today and tomorrow. And if you have C+V you’ll achieve “G” – for Growth or Greatness.

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Despite the reality Covington faced, the introduction of our plan sparked a growing optimism that we could make progress. Contract talks with the police, fire and AFSCME unions had been at an impasse for 15 months. With open, honest and respectful negotiating sessions over a 60-day period, we did finalize new four-year contracts. The contracts included necessary health-care concessions along with modest wage increases, which cut the projected deficit in half.

Simultaneous with these negotiations, we also decided to turn over our dispatch function to Kenton County, saving the city millions in the coming years while improving public safety. The idea of a consolidated dispatch had been debated for nearly 15 years. Hopefully, this action will lead to even more regional thinking among all of the cities in Northern Kentucky.

A final major initiative was conducting an independent review by a national consulting firm of all city departments. I contributed my salary as mayor and raised funds in the private sector to accelerate the reviews. The review enabled us to consider “best of class” practices across the country. The report led to healthy debate and ultimately a restructuring of many operations with sufficient savings to finally achieve a sustainable budget.

During my time as mayor, I have often been asked if I changed my approach to problem solving. Were the strategies I learned during my 35-plus years in the business world still applicable? My answer is that I didn’t change anything. In fact, I relied on many of the skills I developed regarding collaborative leadership and fact-based decision making.

Covington is a city with many diverse assets and opportunities. We have historic neighborhoods and yet we embrace the modern architecture of the Ascent. We have a diverse population and were the first city in our region to adopt a human-rights ordinance. We have old businesses like Motch Jewelers, which has been in operation for 155 years. We have new technology companies like Tier 1 and C-Forward. We have traditional manufacturing companies and an emerging life-science corridor led by Bexion Pharmaceuticals. And we have more public green space than any other city in Northern Kentucky.

When you step back and admire the individual colors that make up our mosaic city, you see a beautiful picture that is Covington. I “Love the Cov,” and so do many developers we’ve been courting.

While my tenure as mayor has ended, I am confident that the new commission will continue the momentum. I am thankful to my fellow commissioners – Sherry Carran, Steve Frank, Steve Casper and Shawn Masters. I have gained tremendous respect for each of them and the Office of Mayor. I also want to thank City Manager Larry Klein and his staff for their dedication and hard work during this year of transformation. I pledge to continue to support their collective efforts to move the city forward.⬛